Word stem

Imagine you have a bunch of different words like "play," "playing," "player," and "plays." While they are all different words, they actually have something in common - they all come from the same little piece of the word called the "stem." The stem is like the main part of the word that stays the same no matter how you change the ending.

So, for example, the stem of "play," "playing," "player," and "plays" is "play." This is the most important part of the word that gives it its meaning. And by knowing the stem, you can figure out what other words might come from it or what different forms of the same word might look like.

Stems can be really helpful for understanding how words work and how they are related to each other. They can also make it easier to learn new words because you can recognize the stem and then just focus on the prefixes and suffixes that change its meaning.